We can’t continue to let the foxes run the hen house

It’s been 221 years since the American republic came into being with General George Washington, the patriot, landowner, slave/concubine holder elected as the first president of the United States of America. That was 1789. America’s third president, the erudite Thomas Jefferson, landowner, slave/concubine holder and suppressor of the successful Haitian revolution of 1804, is yet, along with Abraham Lincoln, perhaps the most revered of our 44 presidents.

The justifications summoned from hell that were used to exterminate Native Americans and enslave Africans translated as the impetus to build a nation based on a notion called democracy. While greed and striving for success drove the colonists’ inhumanity, the “Founding Fathers” knew — and some stated — that a reckoning would come some day.

Today, a small number of surviving Native American tribes have partnered with rich white people and built successful gaming casinos and hotels on land “given” them by U. S. government treaties. However, the vast majority of Indians languish in poverty, hidden on dusty reservations.

African Americans, whose forefathers toiled and died as slaves from the 1600s to 1865 and since as sharecroppers and marginalized second-class citizens still endure consistent hate from the offspring of former slave holders and other white people. African Americans are slowly and methodically being exterminated through a program of eugenics especially enacted upon black men and boys.

It is America as a whole, though, that is descending into the abyss while horribly eating itself in utter madness. What happens when foxes run the hen house? Why, there’d be no more chickens and the foxes would be slaughtered. There would be nothing left that’s worthwhile.

What has happened to America is that the foxes have been allowed to run the hen house. Well, guess what? Foxes are chicken eaters not chicken keepers, remember. Now the foxes have corralled all those fattened middle-class hens with the others and the hen house feast is on.

Who are the foxes? They are the richest one-tenth of one percent (130,000 households) that, in 2007, according to the latest Department of Labor figures available, took in more than 11 percent of total income that year. The richest one percent took in more than 23 percent of all income in 2007. In 2005, their take of national income was 21 percent.

A Rutgers University study reveals that “one in five Americans sees a depression coming.” The study also says that almost two out of three think we will still be in a recession in 2011. The wages of the average American dropped during the last ten years: “A typical son is earning less than his dad did at the same age.”

The current recession hit in December 2007, during the Bush-Cheney administration. Department of Labor figures for 2009 show that 14.9 million Americans were unemployed that year. Among workers 55 and older, 2.2 million or 7.3 percent were out of work. The Census Bureau reports that the poverty rate among Americans 55 to 64 years old in 2009 was 9.4 percent.

Oh, yes, lest we forget, the rich and super-rich want to keep the Bush-Cheney awarded tax breaks and they also want to tamp down on Social Security and give no tax breaks to the middle-class. Meanwhile, more than 14 percent of the American population, some 44 million people, are living in poverty, “the highest number in over 50 years of record-keeping.”

Millions more are now the near-poor, on the edge, a nudge away from falling into abject poverty. If it doesn’t startle you that more than 15 million children are poor, then you’ve already been numbed by those statistics. More than 25 percent of African Americans and Latinos (mostly non-white) are poor and the median family income for 2009 was 5 percent lower than in 1999.

America, come on now, the foxes can’t be in the hen house. They’ll destroy everything. They are greedy. They are not going to take one chicken and leave. They want the whole country.